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Topic: Games should have different software development lifecycle than other soft (Read 126 times)

Development of games, software for home use and enterprise are 3 different worlds. These worlds have various requirement for release cycle, support and sales (licenses). It will be great to reflect this in the game. Currently the process of development of software of different kind in Software Inc is the same.

Here is the list of what can be done differently:

1. Versions, release cycle and development

Marketing

It is normal situation for the game dev company to develop several games with absolutely the same set of features and these games will slightly compete with each other (user may buy all of them at the same time).

For example, platformers like Commander Keen and Mario (or strategy like WarCraft and Dune) may use the same engine, have the same features, but different graphics, music and story.

For home and especially enterprise software such situation is exceptional. User will never buy two 2D editors, if they have same set of features and are developed by one company. Also, if next version of your software has only small amount of new features, it is not likely that users won’t upgrade (except the situation, when price for upgrade is low.

So the market models for games and enterprise should be different. Capacity of the game market is higher. For example, if there are 100 people that plays RPG, that means that you are able to sell 200 copies users (if you have 2 different RPG games). For 2D Editors it’s not true.

Development (expansions)

Games may have expansions. For expansion development mostly art work is required, code changes slightly (there could be some bugfixes and small tuning). Expansion popularity are often limited by the popularity of original game.

Development (sequel)

Sequel development in case of games often requires programming from scratch, you just use some experience from your previous projects and that’s why it’s impossible to save a lot of time. The development of sequel will take approximately the same amount of time. This is the model used in Software Inc right know.

Sequel development for enterprise on the other hand often means, that you are just adding new features to existing project. It’s is much faster! However without code refactoring quality of the sequel is limited by the quality of original product. With each release quality of the code decreases, that’s why after some years and iterations – code can be ruined, so it will be cheaper to develop it from scratch, than to continue just adding new features.

2. Support

Support for games and enterprise differs too. For enterprise it is mostly about consulting users, than just fixing bugs. That’s why the requirement for the personal should be different. It has sense to introduce special role for support staff, especially for the enterprise (mix of QA, Marketing and Programmer skill).

The quality and period of support for enterprise are of course higher (for OSes and databases support period could be 10 years or more)

3. Sale (licenses)

One of the difference in licenses is the existence of Upgrade license for home and enterprise soft, which is cheaper than the full license.

Another difference – enterprise have annual licenses, when user have to pay each year for support. The software could even be free, however support is costly. Ga,es in most cases are one time pay (except MMO and etc)